July 22, 2010

In this podcast, Jim Hultman, a member of the Nebraska Corn Growers Association and a farmer from Sutton, discusses a recent news conference at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. At the news conference, Dr. Don Coursey of the University of Chicago explained his research into the value of atrazine to farmers.

According to the study, atrazine’s annual production value to corn alone is between $2.3 billion and $5.0 billion. Those figures grow when you add in sorghum and sugar cane. As part of his economic study, Coursey said taking atrazine off the market would cost between 21,000 and 48,000 jobs in the corn industry.

He said the range is high because no product has ever been taken off the market on which so many depend and for which suitable replacements have a wide variety of prices and application programs. Replacement costs could reach $58 an acre for corn farmers.

Atrazine, by the way, has been used safely and effectively for more than 50 years. Click here and here for more on the safety of atrazine.

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